He had “no time for more.”
Of the third answer I can just see this fragment, in a fine confident penmanship, among the flames: “Oxford life falls under three heads, which I shall discuss separately. They are Religion, Education, and Social Life. And first of Education. My tutor breakfasts at eight. He has forty-eight pupils, and four ladies from Somerville College. He has one lecture and to-morrow’s to prepare. In the afternoon he will be fresh and cheerful at the college barge, watching the races. He is writing two books, and is on the Board of Guardians. In spite of this the great thing about Oxford education is the way it stamps a man—‘the cast of Vere de Vere,’ as the poet says; no matter in what position in life his lot is thrown, a certain easy grace——”
I find a more rational description of an Oxford day as it was in 1867, and as it was up to the publication of Mr. Rhodes’s will, in the Oxford Spectator, one of the most enduring of undergraduate periodicals.
“The whole History of Philosophy,” says the writer, E. N[olan], “is simply the story of an ordinary Oxford day.... In the morning, when I awake, the eastern dawn, as it shines into my room, gives my philosophy[Pg 354] an Oriental tinge. I turn Buddhist, and lie thinking of nothing. Then I rise, and at once my tenets are those of the Ionics. I think, with Thales, that Water is the great first principle. Under this impression I take my bath. Then, yielding to Animaxander, I begin to believe in the unlimited, and straightway, in a rude toilette, consume an infinite amount of breakfast. This leads to the throwing open of my window, at which I sit, an unconscious disciple of Anaximenes, and a believer in the universal agency of Air. I lock my door and sit down to read mathematics, seeming a very Pythagorean in my loneliness and reverence for numbers. I am disturbed by a knock. I open the door and admit my parlour-maid, who wishes to remove the breakfast things. She is evidently an Eleatic, for she makes an abstraction of everything material, and reduces my table to a state of pure being. Again I am alone, and as I complete my toilet before my mirror, I hold, as Heraclitus did, the principle of the becoming, and think that it, and it only, should be the rule of existence. I saunter to the window, and ponder upon the advantages or otherwise of taking a walk. I am kept at home by some theory of the Elements, such as possessed Empedocles. Now I bethink me of my lunch, and I become an Atomist in my hunger, as I compare the two states of Fulness and Void. At last Atomistic Necessity prevails, and I ring my bell. Lunch over, I walk out, and am much amused, as usual, with the men I meet. I notice that those who have intellect superior to their fellows neglect their personal appearance.[Pg 355] These, I think, are followers of Anaxagoras: they believe in νοῦς, and they deny the Becoming. Others I noticed to be bent upon some violent exercise. I feel myself small and weak beside them, wondering much whether I, who to them am but half a man, am man enough to be considered, sophistically, the measure of all things. I console myself with remarking to myself that I surely know my work for the Schools better than they. Behold! I am Socratic. Virtue, I say, consists in knowing. So I chatter away to myself, feeling quite Platonic in my dialogue, until I meet a luckless friend who is to be examined next day in Moderations. I walk out with him far into the country, talking to him about his work, and struggling against my deeply-rooted antipathy to exertion of any kind. Surely Aristotle could not have been more peripatetic, or Chrysippus more Stoical. The dinner-hour makes me Epicurean, and I pass unconsciously over many stages of philosophy. I spend an hour in the rooms of a friend who is reading hard for honours. I come away but little impressed with the philosophy of the Schoolmen. The evening passes like a dream. I have vague thoughts of recurring to my former good habits of home correspondence; but this revival of letters passes by, leaving me asleep in my chair. Here, again, as at dinner, I doubtless pass through many unconscious stages. At length I begin to muse upon bed. It is a habit of mine to yield to the vulgar fascinations of strong liquors before retiring for the night. Philosophy, I learn, works in a circle, ever[Pg 356] returning unto itself. It is for this reason, perhaps, that my last waking act is inspired both by Hegel and Thales. Hegel prompts me to crave for Spirit: Thales influences me to temper it with Water.”
Yet, if the Oxford day, as is fitting, can always be expressed in terms of philosophy, it is sometimes more complex, often more simple than that; and it is longer. It begins and ends at 7 A.M. At that hour, the student and the fanatical novel-reader, forgetful of time, the passive Bacchanalian, and the man who prefers the divine, long-seated Oxford chair to bed, are usually persuaded to retire; for unacademic voices of servant and starling begin to be heard in the quadrangle. The blackbird is awake in the shrubbery. Very soon the scout will appear, and will not know whether to say “Good-night” or “Good-morning,” and with the vacant face of one who has slept through all the blessed hours of night, will drive men to bed. There is a dreamy laying aside of books—volumes of Daudet and Dickens, Fielding and Abbé Prévost, Morley, Roberts and Poe,—old plays and romances,—Stubbs, and the Chronicles, Stuart pamphlets,—Thucydides, Aristotle, and later Latin than Quintilian. If there is to be a Divinity examination later in the morning, there are Bibles scattered up and down, epitomes, and a sound of men’s voices asking the difference between one and another version of a parable, and “Who was Gallio?” and preparing all the playful acrobatics that will pass for knowledge in the Schools. While these are trying to sleep, with the gold sunlight winning through their[Pg 358][Pg 357]
EXETER COLLEGE CHAPEL, FROM SHIP STREET
The Chapel of the College, rebuilt by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1857, rises in the centre of the picture, and with its spire forms a conspicuous feature in Ship Street.
Below is that part of the College fronting “The Turl.”